The Film Panel Notetaker is a fun and informative educational resource for everyone from film professionals to cinephiles where notes are shared from film panel discussions, filmmaker Q and As, and more.

Friday, October 12, 2007

45th NYFF- "Redacted" - October 11, 2007

Last night at the New York Film Festival, I saw Brian DePalma’s latest film Redacted, which has been met with controversy, not only for its dark, unsettling portrait of a fictionalized account of an actual incident that occurred during the Iraq War where U.S. soldiers raped an Iraqi woman, but also for a dispute that occurred a few days ago at a NYFF press conference where DePalma charged the film’s distributor, Magnolia Pictures, with censoring, or “redacting” if you will, the film’s final moments where pictures of actual wounded and dead Iraqis faces were covered with black bars. Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles spoke out during the conference to defend the distributor’s rights to make that decision. Not 24 hours later, DePalma gives up his fight. Karina Longworth of SpoutBlog has been all over this story like white on rice. Read her latest coverage here.

There was no Q&A after the screening last night, but DePalma did speak briefly before the film began saying, “Normally, I don’t do this because you’re supposed to think these guys are real.” He was referring to the cast of Redacted. DePalma did a “role call.” Present from the cast were Patrick Carroll (Reno Flake), Ty Jones (Master Sergeant Sweet), Mike Figueroa (Sargeant Jim Vasquez), Kel O’Neill (Gabe Blix) and Izzy Diaz (Angel Salazar).

DePalma concluded by saying Redacted was a very exciting movie to make. It’s similar to his 1989 film Casualties of War, but he found a whole new way to tell the story by using the Internet.

2 Comments:

I think we are clear on DePalma's position. What's up with the cast? These performances were one of kind. Traditional pretty cinema this was not. No establishing shot, to two shot to close up. This was raw filmaking that required some wicked skill on the actors part. I want to know more about Ty Jones (who I have seen on NY stages - awesome, pure power), Izzy Diaz (brought some authentic sensitivity to Salazar) Patrick Carroll (Sean who?), Mike Figueroa (a real soldier from Iraq) - c'mon what's next for these future household names!! - D.M. Kennedy (NYC)